Michael Glenn Lewis, 45, entered the plea at the Supreme Court in Cairns this morning and will be sentenced tomorrow.

Lewis was initially in court for an indictment presentation, but his barrister, Peter Feeney, asked for him to be arraigned on the charge, to which Lewis entered a plea of guilty.

The charge of manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of life behind bars.

It has been a year since the body of three-year-old Maliq Nicholas Lloyd Namok-Malamoo — known as “Meeky” — was found dead on the Goodstart Early Learning Centre minibus in the Cairns suburb of Edmonton.

Lewis was driving the centre minibus when he collected the boy from his home and brought him to the childcare centre.

He failed to take Maliq off the bus, despite him being the only child on board at the time.

The boy was found dead on the minibus six hours later.

Another childcare worker, Dion Batrice Grills, who was also on the bus, was initially charged with manslaughter but those charges were dropped in January, after Magistrate Kevin Priestly found she did not have a duty of care over the child.

The court decision prompted an outpouring of grief and anger from Maliq’s family, including his mother, Muriel Namok, who held a press conference earlier this month.

She said life had become difficult since her son died.

“It has robbed me of my hopes and dreams of a mother-and-son relationship and the experiences — enrolling him in prep, his graduation, his first love, teaching him to drive and his uncles teaching him to hunt and generational traditions to provide for this family,” she said at the time.

Lewis is due to appear at the Supreme Court in Cairns for sentencing tomorrow.

– ABC / Kristy Sexton-McGrath